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The origins of mathematical thought lie in the concepts of number, magnitude, and form.[11] Modern studies of animal cognition have shown that these concepts are not unique to humans. Such concepts would have been part of everyday life in hunter-gatherer societies. The idea of the "number" concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between "one", "two", and "many", but not of numbers larger than two.[11]

Prehistoricartifacts discovered in Africa, dated 20,000 years old or more suggest early attempts to quantify time.[not in citation given] The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be more than 20,000 years old and consists of a series of marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone. Common interpretations are that the Ishango bone shows either a tally of the earliest known demonstration of sequences of prime numbers[12] or a six-month lunar calendar.[13] Peter Rudman argues that the development of the concept of prime numbers could only have come about after the concept of division, which he dates to after 10,000 BC, with prime numbers probably not being understood until about 500 BC. He also writes that "no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10."[14] The Ishango bone, according to scholar Alexander Marshack, may have influenced the later development of mathematics in Egypt as, like some entries on the Ishango bone, Egyptian arithmetic also made use of multiplication by 2; this however, is disputed.[15]

Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the peoples of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the days of the early Sumerians through the Hellenistic period almost to the dawn of Christianity.[17] The majority of Babylonian mathematical work comes from two widely separated periods: The first few hundred years of the second millennium BC (Old Babylonian period), and the last few centuries of the first millennium BC (Seleucid period).[18] It is named Babylonian mathematics due to the central role of Babylon as a place of study. Later under the Arab Empire, Mesopotamia, especially Baghdad, once again became an important center of study for Islamic mathematics.

Geometry problem on a clay tablet belonging to a school for scribes; Susa, first half of the 2nd millennium BCE

In contrast to the sparsity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, our knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s.[19] Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.[20]

The earliest evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. They developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC. From around 2500 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.[21]

The Babylonian mathematical tablet Plimpton 322, dated to 1800 BC.

Babylonian mathematics were written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system.[19] From this derives the modern day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 x 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree. It is likely the sexagesimal system was chosen because 60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.[19] Also, unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the Babylonians had a true place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values, much as in the decimal system.[18] The power of the Babylonian notational system lay in that it could be used to represent fractions as easily as whole numbers; thus multiplying two numbers that contained fractions was no different than multiplying integers, similar to our modern notation.[18] The notational system of the Babylonians was the best of any civilization until the Renaissance,[22] and its power allowed it to achieve remarkable computation accuracy and power; for example, the Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation of √2 accurate to five decimal places.[22] The Babylonians lacked, however, an equivalent of the decimal point, and so the place value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context.[18] By the Seleucid period, the Babylonians had developed a zero symbol as a placeholder for empty positions; however it was only used for intermediate positions.[18] This zero sign does not appear in terminal positions, thus the Babylonians came close but did not develop a true place value system.[18]

Other topics covered by Babylonian mathematics include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations, and the calculation of regularreciprocalpairs.[23] The tablets also include multiplication tables and methods for solving linear, quadratic equations and cubic equations, a remarkable achievement for the time.[24] Tablets from the Old Babylonian period also contain the earliest known statement of the Pythagorean theorem.[25] However, as with Egyptian mathematics, Babylonian mathematics shows no awareness of the difference between exact and approximate solutions, or the solvability of a problem, and most importantly, no explicit statement of the need for proofs or logical principles.[20]

Another significant Egyptian mathematical text is the Moscow papyrus, also from the Middle Kingdom period, dated to c. 1890 BC.[31] It consists of what are today called word problems or story problems, which were apparently intended as entertainment. One problem is considered to be of particular importance because it gives a method for finding the volume of a frustum (truncated pyramid).

Greek mathematics refers to the mathematics written in the Greek language from the time of Thales of Miletus (~600 BC) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529 AD.[33] Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language. Greek mathematics of the period following Alexander the Great is sometimes called Hellenistic mathematics.[34]

Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures. All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.[35]

Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC). Although the extent of the influence is disputed, they were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests.

Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.[36] Pythagoras established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number".[37] It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem,[38] though the statement of the theorem has a long history, and with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers.[39][40] Although he was preceded by the Babylonians and the Chinese,[41] the Neopythagorean mathematician Nicomachus (60–120 AD) provided one of the earliest Greco-Romanmultiplication tables, whereas the oldest extant Greek multiplication table is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD (now found in the British Museum).[42] The association of the Neopythagoreans with the Western invention of the multiplication table is evident in its later Medieval name: the mensa Pythagorica.[43]

Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) is important in the history of mathematics for inspiring and guiding others.[44] His Platonic Academy, in Athens, became the mathematical center of the world in the 4th century BC, and it was from this school that the leading mathematicians of the day, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus, came.[45] Plato also discussed the foundations of mathematics,[46] clarified some of the definitions (e.g. that of a line as "breadthless length"), and reorganized the assumptions.[47] The analytic method is ascribed to Plato, while a formula for obtaining Pythagorean triples bears his name.[45]

Eudoxus (408–c. 355 BC) developed the method of exhaustion, a precursor of modern integration[48] and a theory of ratios that avoided the problem of incommensurable magnitudes.[49] The former allowed the calculations of areas and volumes of curvilinear figures,[50] while the latter enabled subsequent geometers to make significant advances in geometry. Though he made no specific technical mathematical discoveries, Aristotle (384–c. 322 BC) contributed significantly to the development of mathematics by laying the foundations of logic.[51]

One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to circa AD 100. The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition 5.[52]

In the 3rd century BC, the premier center of mathematical education and research was the Musaeum of Alexandria.[53] It was there that Euclid (c. 300 BC) taught, and wrote the Elements, widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time.[1] The Elements introduced mathematical rigor through the axiomatic method and is the earliest example of the format still used in mathematics today, that of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof. Although most of the contents of the Elements were already known, Euclid arranged them into a single, coherent logical framework.[54] The Elements was known to all educated people in the West until the middle of the 20th century and its contents are still taught in geometry classes today.[55] In addition to the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, the Elements was meant as an introductory textbook to all mathematical subjects of the time, such as number theory, algebra and solid geometry,[54] including proofs that the square root of two is irrational and that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Euclid also wrote extensively on other subjects, such as conic sections, optics, spherical geometry, and mechanics, but only half of his writings survive.[56]

Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) of Syracuse, widely considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity,[57] used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus.[58] He also showed one could use the method of exhaustion to calculate the value of π with as much precision as desired, and obtained the most accurate value of π then known, 310/71 < π < 310/70.[59] He also studied the spiral bearing his name, obtained formulas for the volumes of surfaces of revolution (paraboloid, ellipsoid, hyperboloid),[58] and an ingenious method of exponentiation for expressing very large numbers.[60] While he is also known for his contributions to physics and several advanced mechanical devices, Archimedes himself placed far greater value on the products of his thought and general mathematical principles.[61] He regarded as his greatest achievement his finding of the surface area and volume of a sphere, which he obtained by proving these are 2/3 the surface area and volume of a cylinder circumscribing the sphere.[62]

Apollonius of Perga (c. 262–190 BC) made significant advances to the study of conic sections, showing that one can obtain all three varieties of conic section by varying the angle of the plane that cuts a double-napped cone.[63] He also coined the terminology in use today for conic sections, namely parabola ("place beside" or "comparison"), "ellipse" ("deficiency"), and "hyperbola" ("a throw beyond").[64] His work Conics is one of the best known and preserved mathematical works from antiquity, and in it he derives many theorems concerning conic sections that would prove invaluable to later mathematicians and astronomers studying planetary motion, such as Isaac Newton.[65] While neither Apollonius nor any other Greek mathematicians made the leap to coordinate geometry, Apollonius' treatment of curves is in some ways similar to the modern treatment, and some of his work seems to anticipate the development of analytical geometry by Descartes some 1800 years later.[66]

Around the same time, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276–194 BC) devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers.[67] The 3rd century BC is generally regarded as the "Golden Age" of Greek mathematics, with advances in pure mathematics henceforth in relative decline.[68] Nevertheless, in the centuries that followed significant advances were made in applied mathematics, most notably trigonometry, largely to address the needs of astronomers.[68]Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190–120 BC) is considered the founder of trigonometry for compiling the first known trigonometric table, and to him is also due the systematic use of the 360 degree circle.[69]Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD) is credited with Heron's formula for finding the area of a scalene triangle and with being the first to recognize the possibility of negative numbers possessing square roots.[70]Menelaus of Alexandria (c. 100 AD) pioneered spherical trigonometry through Menelaus' theorem.[71] The most complete and influential trigonometric work of antiquity is the Almagest of Ptolemy (c. AD 90–168), a landmark astronomical treatise whose trigonometric tables would be used by astronomers for the next thousand years.[72] Ptolemy is also credited with Ptolemy's theorem for deriving trigonometric quantities, and the most accurate value of π outside of China until the medieval period, 3.1416.[73]

Following a period of stagnation after Ptolemy, the period between 250 and 350 AD is sometimes referred to as the "Silver Age" of Greek mathematics.[74] During this period, Diophantus made significant advances in algebra, particularly indeterminate analysis, which is also known as "Diophantine analysis".[75] The study of Diophantine equations and Diophantine approximations is a significant area of research to this day. His main work was the Arithmetica, a collection of 150 algebraic problems dealing with exact solutions to determinate and indeterminate equations.[76] The Arithmetica had a significant influence on later mathematicians, such as Pierre de Fermat, who arrived at his famous Last Theorem after trying to generalize a problem he had read in the Arithmetica (that of dividing a square into two squares).[77] Diophantus also made significant advances in notation, the Arithmetica being the first instance of algebraic symbolism and syncopation.[76]

The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 350–415). She succeeded her father (Theon of Alexandria) as Librarian at the Great Library[citation needed] and wrote many works on applied mathematics. Because of a political dispute, the Christian community in Alexandria had her stripped publicly and executed.[79] Her death is sometimes taken as the end of the era of the Alexandrian Greek mathematics, although work did continue in Athens for another century with figures such as Proclus, Simplicius and Eutocius.[80] Although Proclus and Simplicius were more philosophers than mathematicians, their commentaries on earlier works are valuable sources on Greek mathematics. The closure of the neo-Platonic Academy of Athens by the emperor Justinian in 529 AD is traditionally held as marking the end of the era of Greek mathematics, although the Greek tradition continued unbroken in the Byzantine empire with mathematicians such as Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, the architects of the Haghia Sophia.[81] Nevertheless, Byzantine mathematics consisted mostly of commentaries, with little in the way of innovation, and the centers of mathematical innovation were to be found elsewhere by this time.[82]

The creation of the Roman calendar also necessitated basic mathematics. The first calendar allegedly dates back to 8th century BC during the Roman Kingdom and included 356 days plus a leap year every other year.[92] In contrast, the lunar calendar of the Republican era contained 355 days, roughly ten-and-one-fourth days shorter than the solar year, a discrepancy that was solved by adding an extra month into the calendar after the 23rd of February.[93] This calendar was supplanted by the Julian calendar, a solar calendar organized by Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) and devised by Sosigenes of Alexandria to include a leap day every four years in a 365-day cycle.[94] This calendar, which contained an error of 11 minutes and 14 seconds, was later corrected by the Gregorian calendar organized by Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585), virtually the same solar calendar used in modern times as the international standard calendar.[95]

At roughly the same time, the Han Chinese and the Romans both invented the wheeled odometer device for measuring distances traveled, the Roman model first described by the Roman civil engineer and architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC - c. 15 BC).[96] The device was used at least until the reign of emperor Commodus (r. 177 – 192 AD), but its design seems to have been lost until experiments were made during the 15th century in Western Europe.[97] Perhaps relying on similar gear-work and technology found in the Antikythera mechanism, the odometer of Vitruvius featured chariot wheels measuring 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter turning four-hundred times in one Roman mile (roughly 4590 ft/1400 m). With each revolution, a pin-and-axle device engaged a 400-tooth cogwheel that turned a second gear responsible for dropping pebbles into a box, each pebble representing one mile traversed.[98]

An analysis of early Chinese mathematics has demonstrated its unique development compared to other parts of the world, leading scholars to assume an entirely independent development.[99] The oldest extant mathematical text from China is the Zhoubi Suanjing, variously dated to between 1200 BC and 100 BC, though a date of about 300 BC during the Warring States Period appears reasonable.[100] However, the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips, containing the earliest known decimalmultiplication table (although ancient Babylonians had ones with a base of 60), is dated around 305 BC and is perhaps the oldest surviving mathematical text of China.[41]

Of particular note is the use in Chinese mathematics of a decimal positional notation system, the so-called "rod numerals" in which distinct ciphers were used for numbers between 1 and 10, and additional ciphers for powers of ten.[101] Thus, the number 123 would be written using the symbol for "1", followed by the symbol for "100", then the symbol for "2" followed by the symbol for "10", followed by the symbol for "3". This was the most advanced number system in the world at the time, apparently in use several centuries before the common era and well before the development of the Indian numeral system.[102]Rod numerals allowed the representation of numbers as large as desired and allowed calculations to be carried out on the suan pan, or Chinese abacus. The date of the invention of the suan pan is not certain, but the earliest written mention dates from AD 190, in Xu Yue's Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures.

The oldest existent work on geometry in China comes from the philosophical Mohist canon c. 330 BC, compiled by the followers of Mozi (470–390 BC). The Mo Jing described various aspects of many fields associated with physical science, and provided a small number of geometrical theorems as well.[103] It also defined the concepts of circumference, diameter, radius, and volume.[104]

In 212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than officially sanctioned ones be burned. This decree was not universally obeyed, but as a consequence of this order little is known about ancient Chinese mathematics before this date. After the book burning of 212 BC, the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) produced works of mathematics which presumably expanded on works that are now lost. The most important of these is The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the full title of which appeared by AD 179, but existed in part under other titles beforehand. It consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business, employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering, surveying, and includes material on right triangles.[100] It created mathematical proof for the Pythagorean theorem,[105] and a mathematical formula for Gaussian elimination.[106] The treatise also provides values of π,[100] which Chinese mathematicians originally approximated as 3 until Liu Xin (d. 23 AD) provided a figure of 3.1457 and subsequently Zhang Heng (78–139) approximated pi as 3.1724,[107] as well as 3.162 by taking the square root of 10.[108][109]Liu Hui commented on the Nine Chapters in the 3rd century AD and gave a value of π accurate to 5 decimal places (i.e. 3.14159).[110][111] Though more of a matter of computational stamina than theoretical insight, in the 5th century AD Zu Chongzhi computed the value of π to seven decimal places (i.e. 3.141592), which remained the most accurate value of π for almost the next 1000 years.[110][112] He also established a method which would later be called Cavalieri's principle to find the volume of a sphere.[113]

The high-water mark of Chinese mathematics occurred in the 13th century during the latter half of the Song dynasty (960–1279), with the development of Chinese algebra. The most important text from that period is the Precious Mirror of the Four Elements by Zhu Shijie (1249–1314), dealing with the solution of simultaneous higher order algebraic equations using a method similar to Horner's method.[110] The Precious Mirror also contains a diagram of Pascal's triangle with coefficients of binomial expansions through the eighth power, though both appear in Chinese works as early as 1100.[114] The Chinese also made use of the complex combinatorial diagram known as the magic square and magic circles, described in ancient times and perfected by Yang Hui (AD 1238–1298).[114]

Even after European mathematics began to flourish during the Renaissance, European and Chinese mathematics were separate traditions, with significant Chinese mathematical output in decline from the 13th century onwards. Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci carried mathematical ideas back and forth between the two cultures from the 16th to 18th centuries, though at this point far more mathematical ideas were entering China than leaving.[114]

The earliest civilization on the Indian subcontinent is the Indus Valley Civilization (mature phase: 2600 to 1900 BC) that flourished in the Indus river basin. Their cities were laid out with geometric regularity, but no known mathematical documents survive from this civilization.[120]

The oldest extant mathematical records from India are the Sulba Sutras (dated variously between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century AD),[121] appendices to religious texts which give simple rules for constructing altars of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and others.[122] As with Egypt, the preoccupation with temple functions points to an origin of mathematics in religious ritual.[121] The Sulba Sutras give methods for constructing a circle with approximately the same area as a given square, which imply several different approximations of the value of π.[123][124][a] In addition, they compute the square root of 2 to several decimal places, list Pythagorean triples, and give a statement of the Pythagorean theorem.[124] All of these results are present in Babylonian mathematics, indicating Mesopotamian influence.[121] It is not known to what extent the Sulba Sutras influenced later Indian mathematicians. As in China, there is a lack of continuity in Indian mathematics; significant advances are separated by long periods of inactivity.[121]

The next significant mathematical documents from India after the Sulba Sutras are the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the 4th and 5th centuries AD (Gupta period) showing strong Hellenistic influence.[130] They are significant in that they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry.[131] Through a series of translation errors, the words "sine" and "cosine" derive from the Sanskrit "jiya" and "kojiya".[131]

Around 500 AD, Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, a slim volume, written in verse, intended to supplement the rules of calculation used in astronomy and mathematical mensuration, though with no feeling for logic or deductive methodology.[132] Though about half of the entries are wrong, it is in the Aryabhatiya that the decimal place-value system first appears. Several centuries later, the Muslim mathematicianAbu Rayhan Biruni described the Aryabhatiya as a "mix of common pebbles and costly crystals".[133]

In the 12th century, Bhāskara II[135] lived in southern India and wrote extensively on all then known branches of mathematics. His work contains mathematical objects equivalent or approximately equivalent to infinitesimals, derivatives, the mean value theorem and the derivative of the sine function. To what extent he anticipated the invention of calculus is a controversial subject among historians of mathematics.[136]

The Islamic Empire established across Persia, the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia, and in parts of India in the 8th century made significant contributions towards mathematics. Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, most of them were not written by Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time. Persians contributed to the world of Mathematics alongside Arabs.

In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote several important books on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and on methods for solving equations. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). He gave an exhaustive explanation for the algebraic solution of quadratic equations with positive roots,[143] and he was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake.[144] He also discussed the fundamental method of "reduction" and "balancing", referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation. This is the operation which al-Khwārizmī originally described as al-jabr.[145] His algebra was also no longer concerned "with a series of problems to be resolved, but an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study." He also studied an equation for its own sake and "in a generic manner, insofar as it does not simply emerge in the course of solving a problem, but is specifically called on to define an infinite class of problems."[146]

In Egypt, Abu Kamil extended algebra to the set of irrational numbers, accepting square roots and fourth roots as solutions and coefficients to quadratic equations. He also developed techniques used to solve three non-linear simultaneous equations with three unknown variables. One unique feature of his works was trying to find all the possible solutions to some of his problems, including one where he found 2676 solutions.[147] His works formed an important foundation for the development of algebra and influenced later mathematicians, such as al-Karaji and Fibonacci.

Further developments in algebra were made by Al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integer powers and integer roots of unknown quantities. Something close to a proof by mathematical induction appears in a book written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum of integralcubes.[148] The historian of mathematics, F. Woepcke,[149] praised Al-Karaji for being "the first who introduced the theory of algebraiccalculus." Also in the 10th century, Abul Wafa translated the works of Diophantus into Arabic. Ibn al-Haytham was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, using a method that is readily generalizable for determining the general formula for the sum of any integral powers. He performed an integration in order to find the volume of a paraboloid, and was able to generalize his result for the integrals of polynomials up to the fourth degree. He thus came close to finding a general formula for the integrals of polynomials, but he was not concerned with any polynomials higher than the fourth degree.[150]

In the Pre-Columbian Americas, the Maya civilization that flourished in Mexico and Central America during the 1st millennium AD developed a unique tradition of mathematics that, due to its geographic isolation, was entirely independent of existing European, Egyptian, and Asian mathematics.[153]Maya numerals utilized a base of 20, the vigesimal system, instead of a base of ten that forms the basis of the decimal system used by most modern cultures.[153] The Mayas used mathematics to create the Maya calendar as well as to predict astronomical phenomena in their native Maya astronomy.[153] While the concept of zero had to be inferred in the mathematics of many contemporary cultures, the Mayas developed a standard symbol for it.[153]

Medieval European interest in mathematics was driven by concerns quite different from those of modern mathematicians. One driving element was the belief that mathematics provided the key to understanding the created order of nature, frequently justified by Plato's Timaeus and the biblical passage (in the Book of Wisdom) that God had ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.[154]

Boethius provided a place for mathematics in the curriculum in the 6th century when he coined the term quadrivium to describe the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. He wrote De institutione arithmetica, a free translation from the Greek of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic; De institutione musica, also derived from Greek sources; and a series of excerpts from Euclid's Elements. His works were theoretical, rather than practical, and were the basis of mathematical study until the recovery of Greek and Arabic mathematical works.[155][156]

Leonardo of Pisa, now known as Fibonacci, serendipitously learned about the Hindu–Arabic numerals on a trip to what is now Béjaïa, Algeria with his merchant father. (Europe was still using Roman numerals.) There, he observed a system of arithmetic (specifically algorism) which due to the positional notation of Hindu–Arabic numerals was much more efficient and greatly facilitated commerce. Leonardo wrote Liber Abaci in 1202 (updated in 1254) introducing the technique to Europe and beginning a long period of popularizing it. The book also brought to Europe what is now known as the Fibonacci sequence (known to Indian mathematicians for hundreds of years before that) which was used as an unremarkable example within the text.

The 14th century saw the development of new mathematical concepts to investigate a wide range of problems.[159] One important contribution was development of mathematics of local motion.

Thomas Bradwardine proposed that speed (V) increases in arithmetic proportion as the ratio of force (F) to resistance (R) increases in geometric proportion. Bradwardine expressed this by a series of specific examples, but although the logarithm had not yet been conceived, we can express his conclusion anachronistically by writing:
V = log (F/R).[160] Bradwardine's analysis is an example of transferring a mathematical technique used by al-Kindi and Arnald of Villanova to quantify the nature of compound medicines to a different physical problem.[161]

Heytesbury and others mathematically determined the distance covered by a body undergoing uniformly accelerated motion (today solved by integration), stating that "a moving body uniformly acquiring or losing that increment [of speed] will traverse in some given time a [distance] completely equal to that which it would traverse if it were moving continuously through the same time with the mean degree [of speed]".[164]

Nicole Oresme at the University of Paris and the Italian Giovanni di Casali independently provided graphical demonstrations of this relationship, asserting that the area under the line depicting the constant acceleration, represented the total distance traveled.[165] In a later mathematical commentary on Euclid's Elements, Oresme made a more detailed general analysis in which he demonstrated that a body will acquire in each successive increment of time an increment of any quality that increases as the odd numbers. Since Euclid had demonstrated the sum of the odd numbers are the square numbers, the total quality acquired by the body increases as the square of the time.[166]

During the Renaissance, the development of mathematics and of accounting were intertwined.[167] While there is no direct relationship between algebra and accounting, the teaching of the subjects and the books published often intended for the children of merchants who were sent to reckoning schools (in Flanders and Germany) or abacus schools (known as abbaco in Italy), where they learned the skills useful for trade and commerce. There is probably no need for algebra in performing bookkeeping operations, but for complex bartering operations or the calculation of compound interest, a basic knowledge of arithmetic was mandatory and knowledge of algebra was very useful.

Driven by the demands of navigation and the growing need for accurate maps of large areas, trigonometry grew to be a major branch of mathematics. Bartholomaeus Pitiscus was the first to use the word, publishing his Trigonometria in 1595. Regiomontanus's table of sines and cosines was published in 1533.[172]

During the Renaissance the desire of artists to represent the natural world realistically, together with the rediscovered philosophy of the Greeks, led artists to study mathematics. They were also the engineers and architects of that time, and so had need of mathematics in any case. The art of painting in perspective, and the developments in geometry that involved, were studied intensely.[173]

The 17th century saw an unprecedented increase of mathematical and scientific ideas across Europe. Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter in orbit about that planet, using a telescope based on a toy imported from Holland. Tycho Brahe had gathered an enormous quantity of mathematical data describing the positions of the planets in the sky. By his position as Brahe's assistant, Johannes Kepler was first exposed to and seriously interacted with the topic of planetary motion. Kepler's calculations were made simpler by the contemporaneous invention of logarithms by John Napier and Jost Bürgi. Kepler succeeded in formulating mathematical laws of planetary motion.[174]
The analytic geometry developed by René Descartes (1596–1650) allowed those orbits to be plotted on a graph, in Cartesian coordinates.

Building on earlier work by many predecessors, Isaac Newton discovered the laws of physics explaining Kepler's Laws, and brought together the concepts now known as calculus. Independently, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who is arguably one of the most important mathematicians of the 17th century, developed calculus and much of the calculus notation still in use today. Science and mathematics had become an international endeavor, which would soon spread over the entire world.[175]

In addition to the application of mathematics to the studies of the heavens, applied mathematics began to expand into new areas, with the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Pascal and Fermat set the groundwork for the investigations of probability theory and the corresponding rules of combinatorics in their discussions over a game of gambling. Pascal, with his wager, attempted to use the newly developing probability theory to argue for a life devoted to religion, on the grounds that even if the probability of success was small, the rewards were infinite. In some sense, this foreshadowed the development of utility theory in the 18th–19th century.

The most influential mathematician of the 18th century was arguably Leonhard Euler. His contributions range from founding the study of graph theory with the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem to standardizing many modern mathematical terms and notations. For example, he named the square root of minus 1 with the symbol i, and he popularized the use of the Greek letter π{\displaystyle \pi } to stand for the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. He made numerous contributions to the study of topology, graph theory, calculus, combinatorics, and complex analysis, as evidenced by the multitude of theorems and notations named for him.

Also, for the first time, the limits of mathematics were explored. Niels Henrik Abel, a Norwegian, and Évariste Galois, a Frenchman, proved that there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial equations of degree greater than four (Abel–Ruffini theorem). Other 19th-century mathematicians utilized this in their proofs that straightedge and compass alone are not sufficient to trisect an arbitrary angle, to construct the side of a cube twice the volume of a given cube, nor to construct a square equal in area to a given circle. Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve all of these problems since the time of the ancient Greeks. On the other hand, the limitation of three dimensions in geometry was surpassed in the 19th century through considerations of parameter space and hypercomplex numbers.

Abel and Galois's investigations into the solutions of various polynomial equations laid the groundwork for further developments of group theory, and the associated fields of abstract algebra. In the 20th century physicists and other scientists have seen group theory as the ideal way to study symmetry.

The 20th century saw mathematics become a major profession. Every year, thousands of new Ph.D.s in mathematics were awarded, and jobs were available in both teaching and industry. An effort to catalogue the areas and applications of mathematics was undertaken in Klein's encyclopedia.

Mathematical collaborations of unprecedented size and scope took place. An example is the classification of finite simple groups (also called the "enormous theorem"), whose proof between 1955 and 1983 required 500-odd journal articles by about 100 authors, and filling tens of thousands of pages. A group of French mathematicians, including Jean Dieudonné and André Weil, publishing under the pseudonym "Nicolas Bourbaki", attempted to exposit all of known mathematics as a coherent rigorous whole. The resulting several dozen volumes has had a controversial influence on mathematical education.[176]

At the same time, deep insights were made about the limitations to mathematics. In 1929 and 1930, it was proved the truth or falsity of all statements formulated about the natural numbers plus one of addition and multiplication, was decidable, i.e. could be determined by some algorithm. In 1931, Kurt Gödel found that this was not the case for the natural numbers plus both addition and multiplication; this system, known as Peano arithmetic, was in fact incompletable. (Peano arithmetic is adequate for a good deal of number theory, including the notion of prime number.) A consequence of Gödel's two incompleteness theorems is that in any mathematical system that includes Peano arithmetic (including all of analysis and geometry), truth necessarily outruns proof, i.e. there are true statements that cannot be proved within the system. Hence mathematics cannot be reduced to mathematical logic, and David Hilbert's dream of making all of mathematics complete and consistent needed to be reformulated.

Paul Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. Mathematicians have a game equivalent to the Kevin Bacon Game, which leads to the Erdős number of a mathematician. This describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by joint authorship of mathematical papers.

As in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific age has led to specialization: by the end of the century there were hundreds of specialized areas in mathematics and the Mathematics Subject Classification was dozens of pages long.[178] More and more mathematical journals were published and, by the end of the century, the development of the World Wide Web led to online publishing.

Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched. There is an increasing drive towards open access publishing, first popularized by the arXiv.

There are many observable trends in mathematics, the most notable being that the subject is growing ever larger, computers are ever more important and powerful, the application of mathematics to bioinformatics is rapidly expanding, and the volume of data being produced by science and industry, facilitated by computers, is explosively expanding.[citation needed]

^Sir Thomas L. Heath, A Manual of Greek Mathematics, Dover, 1963, p. 1: "In the case of mathematics, it is the Greek contribution which it is most essential to know, for it was the Greeks who first made mathematics a science."

^"The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. the importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius." – Pierre Simon Laplace http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Indian_numerals.html

^Martin Bernal, "Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science", pp. 72–83 in Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 2000, p. 75.

^David E. Smith (1958), History of Mathematics, Volume I: General Survey of the History of Elementary Mathematics, New York: Dover Publications (a reprint of the 1951 publication), ISBN0486204294, pp. 58, 129.

^David E. Smith (1958), History of Mathematics, Volume I: General Survey of the History of Elementary Mathematics, New York: Dover Publications (a reprint of the 1951 publication), ISBN0486204294, p. 129.

^Development Of Modern Numerals And Numeral Systems: The Hindu-Arabic system, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Quote: "The 1, 4, and 6 are found in the Ashoka inscriptions (3rd century bce); the 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9 appear in the Nana Ghat inscriptions about a century later; and the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 in the Nasik caves of the 1st or 2nd century CE – all in forms that have considerable resemblance to today’s, 2 and 3 being well-recognized cursive derivations from the ancient = and ≡."

^Boyer (1991). "The Arabic Hegemony". History of Mathematics. p. 226. By 766 we learn that an astronomical-mathematical work, known to the Arabs as the Sindhind, was brought to Baghdad from India. It is generally thought that this was the Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, although it may have been the Surya Siddhanata. A few years later, perhaps about 775, this Siddhanata was translated into Arabic, and it was not long afterwards (ca. 780) that Ptolemy's astrological Tetrabiblos was translated into Arabic from the Greek.

^P.P. Divakaran, The first textbook of calculus: Yukti-bhāṣā, Journal of Indian Philosophy 35, 2007, pp. 417–33.

^Pingree, David (December 1992). "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science". Isis. 83 (4): 562. Bibcode:1992Isis...83..554P. doi:10.1086/356288. JSTOR234257. One example I can give you relates to the Indian Mādhava's demonstration, in about 1400 A.D., of the infinite power series of trigonometrical functions using geometrical and algebraic arguments. When this was first described in English by Charles Whish, in the 1830s, it was heralded as the Indians' discovery of the calculus. This claim and Mādhava's achievements were ignored by Western historians, presumably at first because they could not admit that an Indian discovered the calculus, but later because no one read anymore the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which Whish's article was published. The matter resurfaced in the 1950s, and now we have the Sanskrit texts properly edited, and we understand the clever way that Mādhava derived the series without the calculus; but many historians still find it impossible to conceive of the problem and its solution in terms of anything other than the calculus and proclaim that the calculus is what Mādhava found. In this case the elegance and brilliance of Mādhava's mathematics are being distorted as they are buried under the current mathematical solution to a problem to which he discovered an alternate and powerful solution.

^Plofker, Kim (November 2001). "The 'Error' in the Indian "Taylor Series Approximation" to the Sine". Historia Mathematica. 28 (4): 293. doi:10.1006/hmat.2001.2331. It is not unusual to encounter in discussions of Indian mathematics such assertions as that 'the concept of differentiation was understood [in India] from the time of Manjula (... in the 10th century)' [Joseph 1991, 300], or that 'we may consider Madhava to have been the founder of mathematical analysis' (Joseph 1991, 293), or that Bhaskara II may claim to be 'the precursor of Newton and Leibniz in the discovery of the principle of the differential calculus' (Bag 1979, 294).... The points of resemblance, particularly between early European calculus and the Keralese work on power series, have even inspired suggestions of a possible transmission of mathematical ideas from the Malabar coast in or after the 15th century to the Latin scholarly world (e.g., in (Bag 1979, 285)).... It should be borne in mind, however, that such an emphasis on the similarity of Sanskrit (or Malayalam) and Latin mathematics risks diminishing our ability fully to see and comprehend the former. To speak of the Indian 'discovery of the principle of the differential calculus' somewhat obscures the fact that Indian techniques for expressing changes in the Sine by means of the Cosine or vice versa, as in the examples we have seen, remained within that specific trigonometric context. The differential 'principle' was not generalized to arbitrary functions – in fact, the explicit notion of an arbitrary function, not to mention that of its derivative or an algorithm for taking the derivative, is irrelevant here

^(Boyer 1991, "The Arabic Hegemony" p. 230) "The six cases of equations given above exhaust all possibilities for linear and quadratic equations having positive root. So systematic and exhaustive was al-Khwārizmī's exposition that his readers must have had little difficulty in mastering the solutions."

^Gandz and Saloman (1936), The sources of Khwarizmi's algebra, Osiris i, pp. 263–77: "In a sense, Khwarizmi is more entitled to be called "the father of algebra" than Diophantus because Khwarizmi is the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake, Diophantus is primarily concerned with the theory of numbers".

^(Boyer 1991, "The Arabic Hegemony" p. 229) "It is not certain just what the terms al-jabr and muqabalah mean, but the usual interpretation is similar to that implied in the translation above. The word al-jabr presumably meant something like "restoration" or "completion" and seems to refer to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation; the word muqabalah is said to refer to "reduction" or "balancing" – that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation."

^Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, "Translations and Translators", pp. 421–62 in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

^Guy Beaujouan, "The Transformation of the Quadrivium", pp. 463–87 in Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

^Grant, Edward and John E. Murdoch (1987), eds., Mathematics and Its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) ISBN052132260X.

^Clagett, Marshall (1961) The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), pp. 421–40.

^Murdoch, John E. (1969) "Mathesis in Philosophiam Scholasticam Introducta: The Rise and Development of the Application of Mathematics in Fourteenth Century Philosophy and Theology", in Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Âge (Montréal: Institut d'Études Médiévales), at pp. 224–27.

^Eves, Howard, An Introduction to the History of Mathematics, Saunders, 1990, ISBN0030295580, p. 379, "...the concepts of calculus...(are) so far reaching and have exercised such an impact on the modern world that it is perhaps correct to say that without some knowledge of them a person today can scarcely claim to be well educated."

MacTutor History of Mathematics archive (John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson; University of St Andrews, Scotland). An award-winning website containing detailed biographies on many historical and contemporary mathematicians, as well as information on notable curves and various topics in the history of mathematics.